


The Stars, Your Eyes and the Vastness of Space

by overkill_max



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alex Danvers & Lena Luthor Friendship, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Lena Luthor Finds Out Kara Danvers is Supergirl, Lena Luthor Needs a Hug, Major Character Undeath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 10:39:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14788961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overkill_max/pseuds/overkill_max
Summary: Supergirl dies. The vastness of space becomes her new tomb. Lena is unmoored once she learns who Supergirl truly was. Alex doesn’t know how to cope with the grief of losing a sister that knew she was going to die while trying to save a Worldkiller.





	The Stars, Your Eyes and the Vastness of Space

**Author's Note:**

> She survived but she's dead! (Until she's not dead anymore)

 

 

“If the Danvers sisters know one thing,” Alex slurs, toasting to the translucent holograph of her sister in front of her with the entire bottle of whiskey. “It’s that we should come with a warning. And—” she vomits down the front of her shirt, wet and tearful. Once she stops heaving she takes another swig and laughs mirthlessly. “—we don’t… but we should… I guess, what I’m trying to say is—”

 

//

 

Lena had never been to the desert branch of the DEO until this week.

Although she missed the lab bench she had come to call her own in that sleek, downtown office looking DEO facility she had been sequestered to while trying to cure Sam. This facility felt more appropriate to how she felt. How everyone felt.

It was utilitarian, dry, somber, and cold. Almost like being back in the Luthor mansion.

The main floors were carved into the earth itself. Immovable stones jutting out in places that, if people weren’t too careful, they could run into. The more secure hallways were made from cement. Walls so thick that at points no more than four people could fit through. Fluorescent lights blared overhead in every room except this one.

 

//

 

The first time she stepped foot here, a bag was placed over her head to mask the location and her hands were bound in plastic zip tie handcuffs. If the mood hadn’t been so somber in the car, she would have tried to use her training to calculate the exact location.

Instead she felt claustrophobic. Everyone’s emotions were blaring at her in a strange juxtaposition of what should have been a celebratory evening. There was sniffling and so much sadness that even with Winn’s clammy hand trying to hold hers for reassurance, her chest felt heavy. Like a weight was pressing down on her.

This was all wrong, but Lena didn’t know how or why.

 

//

 

Once they arrived, her hands were unbound, and she was ushered to the center of the facility. A red-eyed Director Henshaw, flanked by a still crying Alex and a woman with jet black hair that looked oddly familiar, cleared his throat and nodded.

“Thank you all for being here. As you know, we lost contact with Supergirl at approximately 1800 hours today.” Director Henshaw rubbed at his eyes. “Supergirl disobeyed a direct order to stand down. Instead of letting Mon-El dispatch of the World killer known as Reign in a way that would ensure her destruction, she placed an unconscious Reign in her Kryptonian pod and flew the ship into space.” He tried to continue but was unable to form any words.

“As you may remember from the Myriad incident—” Alex spoke up. Her voice raw but firm. “Once she is in space, there is no atmosphere. There is no gravity. She is unable to generate thrust. She is unable to breathe—” A chorus of gasps filled the room.

“She won’t be able to get back. She was sent here to protect earth and that is what she did.” With a deep breath and a new wave of tears rolling down her face, she continued. “Because her actions were unplanned, we were unable to coordinate a rescue mission.” Alex faltered and Director Henshaw held her tightly against him. “Due to the vastness of space and the fact that our technology isn’t advanced enough to locate her… Supergirl is considered missing in action… but presumed dead.”

 

//

 

Even with all their degrees combined and the easy comradery that came from working in the lab together, they had been unable to save Sam and by extension Supergirl.

The world mourned for their hero, while a handful of people mourned over the death of cub reporter and personified ray of sunshine, Kara Danvers.

 

//

 

Two weeks in and she’s hanging on as poorly as Alex is.

They went from whiskey and scotch so exclusive that a glass cost 500 dollars to the gas store brand after the first two nights.

 

//

 

Eliza never set foot in their own private sanctuary. Although it was painful to bury one daughter, she clung to Alex so much harder these past couple of days that this was the only way to find reprieve from hugs that were too suffocating. Hugs meant for Kara. Who loved to be held tightly and for hours on end.

 

//

 

Winn was like a lost puppy. Following aimlessly behind everyone with a tablet that had run out of battery but hadn’t been recharged due to him not even noticing that the screen was black and unresponsive.

 

//

 

The room had a faint blue glow to it and it only added to the painful reminder of who they had lost.

Lena wished she could change the way the hologram looked. Instead of her hair curled and loose around her face, she wanted it up in a braid or some other intricate updo that she longed to run her fingers through. Thinking it took Kara hours to create, instead of mere seconds.

She wanted so badly to place the pair of heavy glasses on that unseeing face of hers so that those eyes would magically focus on her and not the space above her head.

Kara wasn’t even wearing her iconic red and blue suit. She wore a black bodysuit with a smaller S above her heart. “Almost as if she knew she was dying or something.” Lena thinks. “What?” Alex grunts.

Lena frowns, because she didn’t just think that. She had said it aloud. Her mouth formed those words and now she had Alex’s attention. So, she continued with her thought.

“Her clothes… she’s wearing black. Not like Kara or Supergirl… just a weird cat burglar ready for her own funeral or something or whatever.” Alex laughs so hard she snorts and then starts crying. “That was what she wore when she broke my arm and nearly killed me… I’d take that over this… any day.”

Lena doesn’t understand the significance of the black. Or the pain of nearly being killed by someone you hold so dearly. Wanting Kara above all else? That she understands.

 

//

 

Alex ran through an explanation of what the room beyond the biometric secure door was before she added Lena to the list of authorized users.

It didn’t make sense, how there could be an interactive artificial intelligence program that would provide all the answers she didn’t know she needed, until the door opened, and everything came to life.

Lena gasped.

“It’s not really her… but…” Alex took a deep breath to compose herself before she continued. “But you can ask her anything you would ask Kara.”

Without knowing it, Lena made the same mistake Kara had made when she came face to face with her birth mother’s hologram.

“Can I ask for a hug?”

“I’m not programmed to do that.” Came the automatic reply that frustrated Lena and left her feeling hollow, hollow, hollow.

 

//

 

The pain ebbed and flowed.

Some days were impossible to face sober.

Others she was too enthralled by this strange mix of Kara Danvers, her friend, and Supergirl, the hero, to touch a drop of alcohol.

If Narcissus could pine away until he wasted into nothingness, then Lena would do just the same.

 

//

 

Mon-El gets banished from the past permanently after he tries to vie for sympathy from the only surviving Danvers daughter.

Before he can get through his explanation of how he was trying to save Kara from dying while only killing Reign because of how the headlines from the future had changed to reflect Supergirl’s death; Lena sees red and punches his face without thinking of how her hand could get pulverized against that jaw made of marble while under their yellow sun.

Instead she breaks it. Deep purple forms and doesn’t heal instantly.

Kara’s lenses don’t even bend in her fist.

Lena wants to shout at him. That it was his fault she was dead. But the words get caught in her throat. Instead of feeling triumphant at managing to hurt the man that took Kara away from her… once as his lover and twice as something so twisted and permanent that she feels as if she can’t breathe… she chokes on air. Remembering the promise Kara had made her before going on a suicide mission.

Only then she didn’t know it was Kara making that promise.

She didn’t even know it was a suicide mission until she was stuck in a room full of heart broken agents, wondering why everyone Kara knew was gathered into a facility so secret that she didn’t know it existed until that very moment.

 

//

 

Lena wakes up feeling disoriented.

She had that dream again.

Where instead of the hologram explaining why Kara never told her who she was, it was Supergirl herself doing that. Putting on a pair of glasses she took from Lena’s hands while holding her hair up off her face.

The cot smells of bitter sweat from all the alcohol she can’t seem to stop herself from drinking lately.

The sheets no longer feel itchy against her skin.

She wants to pretend it’s because she’s gotten used to the heavy fabric. But her irritated skin says otherwise. Everything is numb and oh so hollow that she doesn’t feel the cheap material against her skin any more.

 

//

 

“You know, she had a stack of Form SG-561’s pre-filled out in her desk. A whole drawer of them since the week your mom kidnapped her…” Alex offers. As if that explains away the pain she feels.

“Yes… well… I’m glad she had them ready to go.” Lena fills the silence between them.

Alex smiles in a way that makes Lena think that she will never remember how to smile again.

“They’re the official requisition forms she has to fill out when she wants to reveal her identity or has revealed it.” Alex offers with a shrug.

“What?” Lena doesn’t know how to file away that information.

“Now you know what to ask her.” Alex says before exiting the room.

 

//

 

She hunts down Pam from HR with this bit of information. A box with thick manila folders, being held together by thin, brown strings, winds up in the room with her. The only other signature above her own is Alex’s.

_“Only two people know the contents of this box.”_ Lena thinks. Ignoring the countless bureaucrats whose job is to read the forms and approve or deny them.

The form has four pages. The first thick folder is all handwritten in Kara’s loopy script. Common words are misspelled in that endearing way that made Lena think Kara was dyslexic instead of an alien that’s used to a different written language altogether.

Everything is the same for the first three pages. Type of Request, Requestor’s Full Name, Name of the Subject… etc. The only thing that changes is the fourth page. Which has an Additional Information section where Kara pleads with the faceless administrators to let her reveal herself to her best friend. She believes in Lena and if her friend had known who she was from the start, she wouldn’t have hurt her feelings when trying to suss out to truth, at the DEO’s behest, when her mother had revealed herself as the head of Cadmus.

Lena reads all the forms twice.

Confused as to how Kara could have a whole drawer of pre-filled out forms, crisp and without the red “REJECTED” stamp on them.

Not understanding the significance of the date written across the top of the last form.

She tries to rack her brain for anything that could be helpful and all she can think of is the transporter she was working on for Rhea, before she was betrayed, yet again, by someone she cared about.

“Why did you stop writing these?” She asks herself.

“My sister was abducted by a person who demanded the release of a man serving a life sentence for several felonies. The kidnapper was a childhood friend of ours. He figured out I was Supergirl and used my sister as leverage. When I tried to save her the first time a trap was activated and the room she was entombed in started flooding… Alex died.”

It’s odd, hearing this emotional tale from a version of Kara that doesn’t even emote with her hands. Much less change her expression.

“We were able to resuscitate her. But my sister still died, and I guess I finally understood why everyone around me kept telling me that it was too dangerous for you to know the truth. They weren’t worried because you were a Luthor… they were worried because anyone that knows my secret can be used as leverage against Supergirl… Kara Danvers is one thing, but an alien with powers… if someone took you I would tear myself apart trying to find you.”

Lena cried.

“But… why?”

She didn’t understand why. She didn’t understand anything.

“Because I’m in love with you.”

 

//

 

She went back home after that confession.

Unable to face Kara’s unseeing eyes and her stupid “I’m not programmed to do that,” answers that mock Lena every time she wants to get anywhere with a projection of the girl she can no longer touch but can’t escape either.

 

//

 

It breaks her out of mourning Kara in a room where it’s nothing but Kara and her secrets, revealed in a cold and detached tone of memories that can’t touch her or help her feel any better.

Throwing her into the lonely kind of grief where she stays up all night and into the morning. Scrambling to direct two companies where every piece of them remind her of the two people she lost without knowing that by choosing the greater good, it would cost her dearly once again.

Another impossible choice where she refused to pick between Sam, her friend, and the girl of steel who panicked at knowing that Lena had kryptonite.

Lena was hurt that she was just another Luthor to a woman she had looked up to.

After talking it out with Alex and Kara’s memories, she realized that the other woman was beyond hurt because she couldn’t reconcile her friend who she always believed in and the woman that lied to her about kryptonite.

Feeling stupid at having fought so hard against everyone in the DEO, and nearly dying in the process of saving Lena from her mother’s cruel machinations. Only to have Lena prove them right all along.

 

//

 

Alex shrugged at that revelation. Her eyes were red and unfocused. “Welcome to the club. Literally anyone that has ever mattered, even a little to her, has fucking let her down…”

Lena sighed. “She was so bright and so good and all we did was hurt her.”

“She hurt us too.” Alex frowns at the plastic bottle in her hands. The gas station logo rubbing off from her thumbs worrying away the sticker.

“But I guess nothing is as bad as figuring out your parents let their planet die, or that your sister killed your aunt, or that your uncle let you experience the pain of your whole planet dying again… or… or I guess that your cousin refused to take you in because he was too busy taking care of everyone else but you... or whatever.” Alex stops and can’t start up again. As if her own words are catching up to her.

“I know it’s too late to say this… but I would trade Sam and Reign and everyone else on this fucking planet for her…” Lena confesses. Feeling sick and guilty at the admission.

“Even me?” Alex laughs and rubs her face. “That’s harsh Luthor… and here I thought we were on our way to braiding our hair and having sleepovers so we could dish about boys… so much for that friendship bracelet I was making you.” Their shoulders bump as the laugh.

“Especially you…” Lena says without any venom behind her words. “you’d be the first one I trade… not even for Kara… I’d trade you for an ice cream sandwich…”

 

//

 

They mourn for a year and on the anniversary of Kara’s death Lena feels suffocated by the blue light and Alex’s steady presence.

She runs outside and bumps into Eliza who hugs her like Kara used to. Full of sunshine and caring.

It’s too much and not nearly enough.

 

//

 

It’s Thursday when Kara comes back from the dead.

It’s uneventful and no one really knows she’s even back again until much later.

 

//

 

Without powers. Without money and without having memorized any phone number from her now dead cellphone it takes Kara about a month to make her way back to National City.

 

//

 

She wasn’t even a blip on the DEO’s radar when she crashed her way through the atmosphere because the pod that brought her back didn’t make a dent. It glided like a feather and as soon as Kara stepped off of it, it flew back to Argo City. Reuniting with the family that she loved and missed but couldn’t be with anymore.

Everywhere she turned, Kara’s heart grew heavier with the loss of the family she had lived with for longer than she had lived on Krypton.

The only place she had lived for longer than Earth and Krypton was a dark, desolate and timeless place that she feared would still drive her mad if she stared long enough into the emptiness of space.

Kara loved Krypton. But she realized she no longer fit into it.

She cried on Earth birthday. A date she never stopped celebrating with Alex. As much as she had missed her birth mom, she missed Eliza even more and she felt like a traitor for longing to return to Krypton. Having it. And realizing that she didn’t want this. She didn’t want it at all.

She was too human for Kryptonians to fully understand. And she was too alien for Earth to fully embrace.

Yet she was unable to stop reeling from the loss of the family that loved her as she was. A broken girl from the stars.

 

//

 

Amnesia.

That’s the excuse that they give out to everyone that had mourned Kara Danvers and her goofy grin and love of Netflix marathons.

The last fight with the Worldkillers had resulted in so many losses that having someone come back from the dead and regain her memories after everyone had thought she was gone was hailed as a miracle.

Alex punched her arm and tousled her hair. Calling her zombie girl in front of the cameras that helped Kara Danvers’ return dominate the news cycle for that month.

 

//

 

Supergirl returned from her off world mission not long after.

She declared that Reign will be kept in stasis due to Argo City having insufficient resources to erase that coding from her DNA.

Lena got what she wanted and still, it feels empty as she watches Supergirl shake the president’s hand while she received The Presidential Medal of Freedom in the same event that Kara Danvers went to cover for CatCo.

Courtesy of Cat Grant.

 

//

 

Supergirl makes the rounds at all the different DEO outposts.

Even the ones that didn’t work with her personally.

She wants to thank everyone for their support and holds the people in the National City facilities tights against her chest.

One by one they cry against her with loss and relief and Lena can’t stand the sight of it.

 

//

 

Kara is back, and Lena’s chest feels like it’s going to cave in on itself because she hasn’t been able to face her.

Not for lack of trying on Kara’s behalf.

She’s been to her penthouse, all of her offices and even the blue room where Alex and Lena kept the world at bay.

But it’s all too much and she runs out in tears every time Kara comes near her.

If you would have told her that the sun coming back after a long night would ruin it all, Lena would have laughed at how stupid it all sounded. Because getting exactly what she wanted sounded like heaven.

Now she’s not so sure that getting everything you wished for isn’t quite possibly the worst thing that could have happened to her.

 

//

 

Lena finds little gifts from Kara everywhere she turns.

Gentle reminders that Kara never stops thinking about her. Even when she’s being ignored.

 

//

 

Jess feels sorry for Lena.

Feels sorry for Kara who looks lost and so sad.

But not sorry enough to let them accidentally run into each other.

She knows that coming back from the dead must be tough. It just doesn’t feel as tough as the way that Lena broke herself while mourning the sunny reporter that doesn’t seem so sunny anymore.

Everything is a mess and she calls Alex Danvers because she’s the only one that can understand the kind of pain that breaks apart and shatters a person the way Lena has been shattered irreparably.

 

//

 

After all the push and push between them, Lena knows that logically, something had to change.

Nothing prepares her for the collision that broke them out of their dance of coming so close but never quite touching.

 

//

 

Kara is waiting on her balcony when she gets back from a trip overseas. “I was going to call you… but I got tired of being ignored,” she says, “I hope you don’t mind a visit.”

Lena slides the door open, letting Kara into her house. “Yeah.” She says. The words thick on her throat. She heads towards the kitchen for a drink. Taking long gulps from her glass.

“I wanted to tell you…” Kara starts. Her curls catch the sun and she looks so ethereal and all Lena can think of is that stupid, blank expression, that she can’t seem to shake. The version of Kara that Lena has been angry and sad and in front of for so many hours. How it can’t possibly match this version of Kara that is so very much alive.

“…but you were so hurt by me and I had already lied to you… I…” She looks away. “I couldn’t break my promise to you… not this one… it meant so much to you… and I feel that if I could give you this one thing…”

Lena is exhausted. “That if you kept Sam alive it would just be okay that you were dead?” Her voice cracks. Kara breathes out and meets her eyes. They are blue and so sad. In a way the hologram could never get right. Her shoulders are bowed; she doesn’t resemble the hero of National City. Or even her friend. She’s this broken amalgamation that the AI could never give her but painfully tried to.

She sets her glass down and Kara doesn’t move away or forward. She’s stock still and Lena wonders if she could put her hand through her. Like she did with that stupid hologram.

Stepping forward until she’s crowding Kara. Until all she can do is smell that mixture of ozone and sun that her friend always exudes. As always, Kara breaks first and holds her.

It feels like absolution.

It doesn’t feel like enough.

Lena presses a soft, comforting kiss, at the corner of her mouth.

“I love you too. You know.”

Kara turns and catches her mouth. Hungry. Pushing Lena against the sink. The edge digging into her hips as she goes on her tiptoes to catch more of Kara’s skin. Right under her jaw. The one spot she always wanted to kiss but was too afraid to ruin their friendship to do anything about it. Kara lets her. Let’s her bite down too hard on her collarbone. Her hands fumbling at the fabric of the red and blue suit that was once so familiar but now seemed foreign. Her Kara was either always wearing cardigans and pastels or a somber black.

“Lena,” Kara says, eyes so bright they scare her. Lena kisses her to keep everything between them unsaid.

She comes with Kara’s fingers hooked inside her, touching her in a way that ignites her and terrifies her. Lena’s eyes are shut tight while she pants. Holding onto Kara so tightly because she’s afraid of becoming unraveled. Kara’s other hand is rubbing soothing circles on her back as she starts whispering how much she missed her.

It’s too much.

She can’t breathe and all she can think of is that blue room and Kara being dead and she is hollow once again.

“You should go.” Lena whispers. Her breathing is unsteady and her eyes refuse to connect with Kara’s. Staring at her own reflection on the microwave. Distorted. Just how she feels.

All twisted up and hollow.

She doesn’t see what Kara’s face looks like when she’s trying to put herself back together. Not quite the same way that Lena has had to put herself back together after being left alone and broken for so long.

The balcony slides shut soundlessly behind her and Lena cries and drinks straight from the bottle, like she learned from Alex so long ago, until she falls asleep on the kitchen floor.

 

//

 

The blue room with a blank looking Kara feels redundant now that the real one is back. And yet… she can’t stay away.

Alex is in there too.

Both lost without Kara to anchor them to this world. Both lost with Kara back.

“I think it’s because she’s like a pod person now…” Alex suggests. Drinking from the bottle of Lena’s oldest and most expensive scotch. It was her father’s. He was saving it for a Lex’s wedding. “You know… because now she’s back but she’s like the stupid AI thing. She’s so serious and I don’t know how to be with this broken Kara that came back from the brink of death a fifth time… you know?”

Lena laughs. “A fifth time? Does she get a freebie after the fourth one? Die four times you come back to earth from space for free?”

Alex laughs until she cries. Not the sad, fat tears of before Kara came back. Happy, confused ones she’s been shedding since her sister’s been back.

“No… the first couple of ones… they were… I don’t know… with her uncle and everything… it doesn’t get any easier to lose her and get her back…I think.” The room is serious again and Lena doesn’t even taste the scotch anymore. Her chest hurts, and her throat burns and she’s not ready to know the truth of how she could have lost Kara without ever knowing her.

But she listens anyway.

 

//

 

Lena thought about giving her key back via Alex or some other messenger. Too much of a coward to face Kara now that she’s been cracked open and is still feeling like there’s too much and not nearly enough that she doesn’t know.

Instead she lets herself into the apartment she had been unable to visit but paid rent on and a maid to keep tidy. A mausoleum until it wasn’t.

Kara looks up from the couch. Lena would ask what she was up to if her purse hadn’t vibrated from another unread message.

Apologies that go unnoticed but still get sent anyway.

“Donut?” She asks, holding up a white bag from the same bakery Kara had introduced her to the one night she was feeling down and sorry for herself. Pink for Kara and glazed for herself. The feeling of déjà vu makes her feel dizzy, but she presses on.

Kara hesitates. Those blue eyes searching for something. The glasses sit crooked on her face and she reaches up to fix them. A nervous gesture that Lena wonders if it’s part of her human costume or if it’s part of Kara the alien.

Lena bites her lip and looks at the ground. Afraid of having ruined everything with her need to pull Kara impossibly close and push her away in a bout of anger and confusion.

“Yeah.” And that’s all she needs before dropping her purse next to Kara’s. Beneath all the coats it’s too warm to wear now.

“I thought apology donuts were in order.” She offers, shaking the bag in front of her.

Kara bites her lip and looks away. Uncertain. “I thought you didn’t want to talk to me again… like… ever.”

“Here’s the thing,” Lena sighs, “I love you too…”

Kara smiles so brightly that Lena feels undeserving. “I love you, Lena. I love you and I came back to you so I could tell you that in person. So I could tell you that every chance I got.”

That hollow feeling that was inside of her suddenly fills up. The final piece she was missing for so long slots into place and walks towards the girl that fell from the stars a third time.

“I love you Kara… and even though I’m still mad you went all self-sacrificing hero to save Sam because I was mad at Supergirl… I love you.” Lena sets the bag down on the coffee table and takes Kara’s face in her hands. Kara’s too warm skin is so soft and so real that Lena cries as she kisses her.

**Author's Note:**

> Trying out a new writing style to get rid of all these feels.


End file.
